The Queerness of Hip Hop/ The Hip Hop of Queerness Symposium and Special Issue of Palimpsest [Due: Dec. 15, 2011]
The Queerness of Hip Hop/ The Hip Hop of Queerness
Call for Papers for a One-Day Symposium at Harvard University and Special Issue of Palimpsest, A journal of Women, Gender and the Black International
Conveners/ Editors: Scott Poulson-Bryant and C. Riley Snorton, Ph.D.
Abstracts due December 15, 2011
Harvard University Symposium
September 21, 2012
As Queer Theory has developed as a discursive space in which to investigate and find intellectual engagement with issues of citizenship, nationalism, globalism, and race, hip hop studies has increasingly become an important site of the study of sexuality, gender and the body.
"The Queerness of Hip Hop/The Hip Hop of Queerness" project seeks to make a critical intervention in both areas of study by placing the fields alongside each other. In other words, "The Queerness of Hip Hop" looks to engage the ways that queer theory can (re)frame various disciplinary approaches in the rapidly growing field of Hip Hop Studies. One of the main goals of the project will be to focus on the emergence of Queer Theory as a viable analytic in the academic areas of hip hop cultural studies and African American cultural production while also and conversely examining hip hop's roots in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender activism and intellectual growth.
We are particularly interested in scholarship that makes use of cross-disciplinary approaches that sustain attention to both the discursive linkages and slippages that may result from bringing hip hop epistemologies to bear on contemporary queer theory and queer canonical texts. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):
- hip hop's queer historiography
- queer iconography in hip hop music videos and performance
- hip hop's queer aesthetics
- sampling and remixing as queer sonic promiscuity
- hip hop and gender performance
- style and fashion as modes of hip hop discourse
- queer readings of specific hip hop productions, personalities and performances
- queer Diaspora/ hip hop Diaspora
Submitted abstracts will be considered for inclusion in both the special issue of Palimpsest and the symposium. All submissions will be acknowledged by January 1, 2012 and decisions will be made by February 1, 2012. Essays must be previously unpublished work, and symposium participants are required to pre-circulate their essays with other panelists. Please submit 300 word abstracts, CV, and contact information to Scott Poulson-Bryant and C. Riley Snorton via queernessofhiphop@gmail.com.